• Today’s physics news: Asteroid’s clues to Earth’s birth, continents may reflect conditions in the Earth’s core and more

    Updated: 2011-10-31 10:35:12
    Today’s physics news: Asteroid’s clues to Earth’s birth, continents may reflect conditions in the Earth’s core and more Asteroid’s clues to Earth’s birth An asteroid a quarter of a mile wide could yield clues about how Earth is formed when it streaks past our planet next week, missing by just 200,000 miles. Telegraph Continents may [...]

  • QFT Rocks!

    Updated: 2011-10-29 00:22:16
    Skip to content Asymptotia While Relaxing QFT Rocks Published by Clifford on October 28, 2011 in Los Angeles research science string theory and work 0 Comments I’m having a blast teaching the introductory quantum field theory class , as you may have gathered from several previous posts . It has been taking a lot of time , but I’ve been doing detailed computations with the students and hence taking up a lot of preparation time to make sure they really get how to compute in a quantum field theory such as Quantum Electrodynamics QED and see how it connects to the real world . Having spent time on the electron anomalous magnetic moment computation I told you about that spectacular feature of QED earlier we went back to basics to discuss in more detail the nature of the physics that is to be

  • Are Americans Ready to Start Drinking Their (Treated) Toilet Water? | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-28 19:40:00
    As the American Southwest reels from one of the worst droughts on record, some parched communities are opting for a once-unthinkable conservation measure: extracting drinking water from urine and other liquid waste. The small Texas city of Big Spring is the latest to take the plunge, announcing that late next year it will begin adding 2 million gallons of recycled water daily to the drinking supply. San Diego recently began a pilot project of its own, hoping to make believers of the one-third of its population who oppose or are unsure about the technique. While so-called toilet-to-tap ventures certainly sound unpleasant, skeptical citizens should take heed of the rigorous filtration process that makes recycled wastewater as safe to drink as conventional tap water. “Water treatment involves many steps between commode and faucet,” says Mike Markus, an environmental engineer at the Orange County Water District in California, which has been processing liquid sewage into drinking water since 2008... Image: iStockphoto

  • Physics news: Faster-than-light test runs again, laser gyroscope measures the Earth’s ‘wobble’ and more

    Updated: 2011-10-28 10:27:40
    Physics news: Faster-than-light test runs again, laser gyroscope measures the Earth’s ‘wobble’ and more Faster-than-light test runs again Scientists who announced that sub-atomic particles might be able to travel faster than light are to repeat their experiment in a different way. BBC Laser gyroscope measures the Earth’s ‘wobble’ New method would be cheaper and simpler [...]

  • Your Brain Knows a Lot More Than You Realize | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-27 16:30:00
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  • Guest Post: Don Page on Quantum Cosmology | Cosmic Variance

    Updated: 2011-10-26 19:42:26
    Following the guest post from Tom Banks on challenges to eternal inflation, we’re happy to post a follow-up to this discussion by Don Page. Don was a graduate student of Stephen Hawking’s, and is now a professor at the University of Alberta. We have even collaborated in the past, but don’t hold that against him. [...]

  • Today’s physics news: Astronomers solve 2,000 year old supernova mystery, faster-than-light neutrino result to get extra checks and more

    Updated: 2011-10-26 10:47:38
    Today’s physics news: Astronomers solve 2,000 year old supernova mystery, faster-than-light neutrino result to get extra checks and more Astronomers solve 2,000 year old supernova mystery Astronomers have solved a mystery dating back almost 2,000 years to when Chinese stargazers witnessed the first recorded supernova happening in space. Telegraph  Fallout forensics hike radiation toll Global [...]

  • 11/11/11, Portal to Another Universe?

    Updated: 2011-10-26 02:19:15
    According to World News Forecast, 11:11am on 11/11/11 could, if Uri Geller is right, be a portal to another universe. This is from Geller’s web-page on the subject: String theory is said to be the theory of everything. It is … Continue reading →

  • Does Time Exist? | Cosmic Variance

    Updated: 2011-10-25 16:51:02
    Videos from our Setting Time Aright conference are gradually filtering online, courtesy of the Foundational Questions Institute. Perhaps the very first question that should be asked, of course, is whether the subject of the conference actually exists. So we recruited two well-known partisans on this issue to hash things out. Tim Maudlin is a philosopher [...]

  • How Your Tax Dollars Save Lives: Gene Therapy | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-24 18:34:29
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  • Spark of Truth: Can Science Bring Justice to Arson Trials? | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-24 18:10:00
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  • Guest Post: Tom Banks Contra Eternal Inflation | Cosmic Variance

    Updated: 2011-10-24 16:38:31
    Now that we’ve softened you up by explaining a bit about eternal inflation and its puzzles, we’re very happy to host a guest post by Tom Banks in which he really hits on some of these problems hard. Tom is a professor at Rutgers and UC Santa Cruz, an extremely accomplished researcher in field theory [...]

  • we shot (a little) of that: noam pikelny goes bluegrass diva

    Updated: 2011-10-24 07:37:51

  • The Status of SUSY

    Updated: 2011-10-22 18:35:40
    You may have seen by now claims from various sources about evidence for SUSY coming from CMS, for instance Hints of New Physics Crop Up at LHC, A Lifeline for Supersymmetry?, and CMS sees SUSY-like trilepton excesses. This nonsense is … Continue reading →

  • The Eternally Existing, Self-Reproducing, Frequently Puzzling Inflationary Universe | Cosmic Variance

    Updated: 2011-10-21 17:11:31
    My inaugural column for Discover discussed the lighting-rod topic of the inflationary multiverse. But there’s only so much you can cover in 1500 words, and there are a number of foundational issues regarding inflation that are keeping cosmologists up at night these days. We have a guest post or two coming up that will highlight [...]

  • Southern California Strings Seminar

    Updated: 2011-10-20 04:23:36
    Skip to content Asymptotia Market Paints Southern California Strings Seminar Published by Clifford on October 19, 2011 in Los Angeles research science string theory and work 0 Comments The next Southern California Strings Seminar is on Friday 21st October The website is here It is going to be held over at UCLA this time , and I expect it’ll be fun and informative , as these regional meetings have proven to be . This time it is a one-day event again . You may recall that the last one , on May 6th , was over at USC . See here There’s a random picture from it above . left Apologies to anyone who was hoping to hear about this sooner . I’ve been a bit snowed under and have been a bit slow to get the word around as much as I’d normally . do Don’t forget : If you’re from one of the groups in the

  • Market Paints

    Updated: 2011-10-20 03:47:56
    Yeah, quickly (ish) splashed some colour onto it on the bus today, using the ipad. Fun... (Forgot to do some shade strokes on the little girl's shirt. Eh...) [...]

  • Solvay Centenary

    Updated: 2011-10-20 00:30:59
    The first Solvay conference was in 1911 (at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels, where I stayed one night of my recent trip to Belgium, without knowing the history), attended by the great men of the early days of quantum theory, … Continue reading →

  • This Week’s Hype

    Updated: 2011-10-19 23:37:55
    A couple people have written to tell me about the new BBC Faster Than the Speed of Light? documentary on superluminal neutrinos which evidently featured trademark hype from string theorist Mike Duff about how string theory could explain this. For … Continue reading →

  • String Theory Finds a Bench Mate

    Updated: 2011-10-19 21:17:51
    There’s a nice article this week in Nature about AdS/CMT, entitled String Theory Finds a Bench Mate. According to the article, the whole thing is (partly) my fault: But in 2006, string theory took a public battering in two popular … Continue reading →

  • Welcome to the Multiverse

    Updated: 2011-10-19 20:37:51
    The October issue of Discover magazine has a new feature, a column by Sean Carroll, whose inaugural effort is now on-line as Welcome to the Multiverse. Sean makes the argument that opposition to multiverse mania is due to people having … Continue reading →

  • Impatient Futurist: How to Achieve Near-Immortality: Wear the Right Clothes | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-19 18:30:00
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  • Column: Welcome to the Multiverse | Cosmic Variance

    Updated: 2011-10-18 17:47:10
    Many of you may know that Discover is not only a web site that hosts a diverse collection of entertaining blogs, but also publishes a monthly “magazine” printed on paper. Wild, right? Just ask this baby, who can tell you that a magazine is kind of broken when compared to an iPad. Nevertheless, people read [...]

  • Landmarks

    Updated: 2011-10-18 00:01:57
    Skip to content Asymptotia Back to the Routine Landmarks Published by Clifford on October 17, 2011 in research science and work 0 Comments We reached certain key landmarks in the quantum field theory class last week . Not only did we uncover how the Dirac equation predicts that the electron’s spin couples to a background magnetic field , but that it is to a first approximation twice the coupling that its angular momentum couples with . This is a remarkable output once again from that wonderful equation , the result of putting together Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity . I’ve discussed other properties of it before , here Makes you wonder , doesn’t it If finding an equation that puts together QM and SR results in so many marvellous things about Nature just falling out so nicely

  • The Brain: The Language Fossils Buried in Every Cell of Your Body | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-17 19:25:00
    It is a shame that grammar leaves no fossils behind. Few things have been more important to our evolutionary history than language. Because our ancestors could talk to each other, they became a powerfully cooperative species. In modern society we are so submerged in words—spoken, written, signed, and texted—that they seem inseparable from human identity. And yet we cannot excavate some fossil from an Ethiopian hillside, point to a bone, and declare, “This is where language began.” Lacking hard evidence, scholars of the past speculated broadly about the origin of language. Some claimed that it started out as cries of pain, which gradually crystallized into distinct words. Others traced it back to music, to the imitation of animal grunts, or to birdsong. In 1866 the Linguistic Society of Paris got so exasperated by these unmoored musings that it banned all communication on the origin of language. Its English counterpart felt the same way. In 1873 the president of the Philological Society of London declared that linguists “shall do more by tracing the historical growth of one single work-a-day tongue, than by filling wastepaper baskets with reams of paper covered with speculations on the origin of all tongues.” A century passed before linguists had a serious change of heart. The change came as they began to look at the deep structure of language itself. MIT linguist Noam Chomsky asserted that the way children acquire language is so effortless that it must have a biological foundation. Building on this idea, some of his colleagues argued that language is an adaptation shaped by natural selection, just like eyes and wings. If so, it should be possible to find clues about how human language evolved from grunts or gestures by observing the communication of our close primate relatives. This line of thinking raised an exciting possibility: Perhaps language left a fossil record after all—not in buried bones, but in our DNA. Yet for years biologists could not find a single gene involved in language...

  • Next-Generation, Honking-Big, Recession-Proof Alien Hunting | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-15 18:05:00
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  • AdS Vs CMT

    Updated: 2011-10-13 01:36:56
    Skip to content Asymptotia CicLAvia AdS Vs CMT Published by Clifford on October 12, 2011 in fun research science and work 0 Comments So there are two workshops going on here at the KITP in Santa Barbara that pertain to issues in condensed matter physics . You may recall that I am here for some of the week , and in LA at USC for the rest of the week adds up to a full week each week . One is Holographic Duality and Condensed Matter Physics often referred to as AdS CMT concerning applications I’ve told you about this here before of techniques from string theory to issues in condensed matter theory and experiment , and the other is Topological Insulators and Superconductors . there are people from both communities on both workshops , and so it is an exciting and interesting time . The KITP

  • CERN Lectures on Cosmology and Particle Physics | Cosmic Variance

    Updated: 2011-10-12 18:19:42
    Here’s a blast from the somewhat-recent past: a set of five lectures I gave at CERN in 2005. It looks like the quality of the recording is pretty good. The first lecture was an overview at a colloquium level; i.e. meant for physicists, but not necessarily with any knowledge of cosmology. The next four are [...]

  • World's Deepest Known Animal: Worm That Lives Under Almost a Mile of Rock | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-12 16:15:00
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  • Twisting Radio Waves Could Give Us 100x More Wireless Bandwidth | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-10 19:25:00
    As more people stream video to their mobile devices, wireless bandwidth is becoming an increasingly precious commodity. Data traffic increased 8,000 percent in the past four years on AT&T’s network alone. In trying to avoid what the Federal Communications Commission calls a “looming spectrum crisis,” telecommunications companies are lobbying the government to assign them more spectrum space in the 300- to 3,000-megahertz range, the sweet spot for wireless communication. But Italian astrophysicist Fabrizio Tamburini says a solution may lie in making better use of the frequencies already in use. In a recent paper, he demonstrated a potential way to squeeze 100 times more bandwidth out of existing frequencies. The idea is to twist radio waves like corkscrews and create multiple subfrequencies, distinguished by their degree of twistedness. Each subchannel carries discrete data sets. “You can tune the wave with a given frequency as you normally do, but there is also a fingerprint left by the twist,” Tamburini says... Image: Warped radio waves may satisfy the ballooning demand for spectrum space. Source: iStockphoto

  • Weinberg on Symmetry

    Updated: 2011-10-10 17:37:48
    The latest New York Review of Books has an article by Steven Weinberg entitled Symmetry: A ‘Key to Nature’s Secrets’. It’s a bit unusual for the NYRB, since it is both scientifically more technical than usual for them (coming from … Continue reading →

  • News From Europe

    Updated: 2011-10-07 19:21:50
    A few items with a European flavor: The news from Dublin is that Witten will be in town soon to give the Hamilton Lecture, with the Irish Times reporting that Witten’s Hamilton Lecture will abandon string theory, however, in favour … Continue reading →

  • 20 Things You Didn't Know About... Fire | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-07 17:55:00
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  • How I Became a Master of Memory | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-06 17:20:00
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  • Dawn of the BioHackers | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-05 20:30:00
    Hugh Rienhoff climbs the stairs into his attic and ascends into a universe of genes, a space dominated by printouts and digital displays of his daughter’s DNA. It is a ritual he has followed regularly for the past five years, retreating here or to a makeshift basement lab in his San Francisco–area home, on the hunt for an error hidden somewhere within Beatrice Rienhoff’s genetic code. A mutation for which there are no data anywhere in medicine has depleted her muscle mass and weakened her joints. As an infant, Beatrice could not hold up her head at a time when most other babies her age were long past that milestone. Today, at age 7, she is heartbreakingly thin and wears braces in her shoes to support her fragile ankles. Finding the cause could point the way to a meaningful treatment. Even though Rienhoff is the founder of two biotechnology companies and holds a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University, he has conducted his hunt not as an expert in human genomics but as a do-it-yourself biologist, teaching himself the tricks of the trade as he moves along and doing his research at home. As a gene tracker, he has collected data on more than a billion DNA sequences in a lonely search that has taken him down dozens of blind alleys. Yet despite occasional doubts, he knows he is moving in the right direction. In fact, Rienhoff suspected his daughter’s condition was caused by a genetic glitch the moment he laid eyes on her. The problem was that neither he nor any of his colleagues knew which gene, or genes, was to blame. To find out, Rienhoff and his wife, Lisa Hane, first sought out an army of geneticists from coast to coast. “When my daughter was born, we went through the usual diagnostic circles, and arriving at nothing concrete, we went through a more extensive process, going outside the San Francisco Bay Area, going to Hopkins where I trained. And I said to them, ‘Why don’t you take a crack at this?’ ” Doctors offered many possibilities, but their theories inevitably led to dead ends. And since a medical condition with an apparent patient population of one could hardly garner federal funding, Rienhoff recast himself as a citizen scientist, a do-it-yourselfer who now finally has a candidate gene in hand. Rienhoff retreated to his solitary attic to help his daughter, but he is not alone in his approach. A growing cadre of do-it-yourself (DIY) biologists have taken to closets, kitchens, basements, and other offbeat lab spaces to tinker with genomes, create synthetic life-forms, or—like Rienhoff—seek out elusive cures... Image: Ellen Jorgensen, at the work in the Genspace laboratory. Credit: Grant Delin.

  • Vital Signs: Far From Oakay | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-05 15:30:00
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  • a conversation with yonder mountain string band

    Updated: 2011-10-05 14:27:02

  • Where Bullet Trains Run the Gauntlet | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-05 00:15:00
    
Artificial snow pelts the lead car of the 460-passenger Velaro D, Germany’s newest high-speed train, during extreme weather testing at the Rail Tec Arsenal research facility in Vienna. As part of its safety tests, Siemens, the train’s manufacturer, purchased 1,000 hours in a 300-foot-long wind tunnel, where independent inspectors exposed a prototype to rain, sleet, and snow in temperatures ranging from below zero to more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit... Image: Stress-testing a train. Credit: Siemens.

  • Dark Energy FAQ | Cosmic Variance

    Updated: 2011-10-04 23:19:59
    In honor of the Nobel Prize, here are some questions that are frequently asked about dark energy, or should be. What is dark energy? It’s what makes the universe accelerate, if indeed there is a “thing” that does that. (See below.) So I guess I should be asking… what does it mean to say the [...]

  • What You Don't Know Can Kill You | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2011-10-03 16:50:00
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